Something has descended
like feathered prophecy.
Someone has offered the world
a bowl of frozen tears,
has traced the veins and edges
of leaves with furred ink.
The grass is stiff as the strings
of a lute.
And, day by day, the tiny windows
crack their cardboard frames
seizing the frail light. The sun,
moving through
these waxy squares, undiminished
as a word passing
from mind to speech.
Every breath a birth,
a stir of floating limbs within me.
I stay up late and waken early
to feel beneath my feet
the silence coming.